What Turbine got right with AC1 was the flexibility in character development. Rather than have fixed specific character types, you basically had templates that you could either follow or not. This allowed people to create any character type they wanted. Unfortunately it also led to screwing the pooch if you made a mistake in choosing your upgrades. For me, I liked my characters flaws, it made you think a lot more about what you were doing and how to do it.
AC1's doom was Microsoft. I was there when they came in and destroyed the volunteer team of helpers. I watched as the MS people came in and walked over those that built that team and ruined it. Ken Karl and his team of MS employees ruled with an iron fist and eventually MS disbanded the Advocate team.
AC2 was a total and complete disaster from the beginning and the fault lies squarely at the feet of MS. Instead of letting the game designers to their job, MS tried to make AC2 into something it couldn't be. I was in the Alpha and Beta of AC2 and from the beginning, they only thing it had going for it was eye candy. At the time, the visuals were just stunning but the game play was clearly going to be lacking.
Fortunately after the fiasco that was AC2, Turbine was able to buy back control of AC1 and kept it going. To this day AC1 will always hold a special place in my heart because it was the first MMO I actually enjoyed playing.
I was also lucky enough to get my name in the game credits for AC:Dark Majesty as a member of the Vanguard Team. My experience with the employees of Turbine let me know they truly understand gamers.
They don't need to subversively change your vote, just create a UI for the voting machine that is designed to facilitate voter mistakes, say make the touch area for some candidates bigger than others with a bit of overlap.
This gives you the plausible deniability that it was the voters mistake. Fingers too fat (You know how fat Americans are), plain stupidity (Bubba's just too stupid to work an electronic device), too old (Gramps clearly couldn't see who he was voting for).
Remember, they don't have to deliberately change the votes, just make it so any mistakes made will favor your candidate. From a UI design standpoint, this is easily done.
Until there is a way to be sure the code running on a voting machine is properly vetted, it's insane to think they should be trusted.
If your willing to trust one of these machines, just give me your paper ballot. I promise it will get tallied correctly.;)
Things like access to studio time, recording engineers, marketing, and most importantly, the up-front money to give the artists the time they need to create the tracks.
With today's technology it's not that hard to eliminate the need to pay large sums of money for studio time and the engineers to make it work. With a good PC, someone with a good ear, and an artist that actually has talent (Hell, who am I kidding, these days you don't even need that!) it's not hard to a produce quality product.
Most tripe put out these days that's done in a fancy, over-priced studio is usually so over processed it sounds nothing like the actual artist. This is how you end up with no talent "artists" putting out albums that end up having to lip-sync in concert because reality doesn't match the fantasy recording.
People forget what "unlimited" Internet means when used in marketing access plans. Back in the "old" days, your connection to the Internet was metered by time since everyone pretty much got the maximum available and you didn't have bandwidth tiering you have with today's massive capacities. You usually had X hours of service per month in your plan. This is the "limited" part of the sales pitch. Eventually the ISPs were able to offer "Unlimited" access, meaning you could leave it on 24/7 all month and only pay the monthly fee.
Now some people are clamoring that they were sold "Unlimited" service and they are being cheated. Bullshit. Your still allowed to stay connected for an "unlimited" amount of time which is exactly what your paying for and my guess is that your service contract states this, you get X bandwidth available 24/7. Even then, that 24/7 isn't guaranteed but it's the exception not the rule when there's a problem with connectivity [Insert chosen ISP bashing here].
I'm not saying this is a Good Thing(TM), but it's not like anyone has been cheated. It's just been a case of very slimy marketing by the ISPs.
This was my line of thinking as well. At best it can tell who is the better liar but it won't quantify a damn thing. It doesn't surprise me that the better liar comes out with the "least" spin indication. He's the professional liar in the bunch and therefore won't have as many tells.
This was my thought as well as soon as I saw the photo. This will only be good on really smooth floors like warehouses, airports and malls.
Try riding one of these on a street or sidewalk and the second you hit a small piece of debris that thing is going to reveal it's true name, "The Nutbuster"
In some cases, selectively "feeding" the troll once or twice is a good things, then let them proceed to show everyone else they are idiots.
This is how I like to handle Trolls. I like to give them just enough rope to hang themselves in front of the userbase. Once your userbase sees the Troll in the light of day, they get turned to stone and stopped dead in their tracks.
Of course there's always that occasional super-Troll that's resistant to light and breeds sockpuppets like roaches. These you need to bust out the +5 Holy Sword of Light and Troll Slaying to throw down some bans.
I have no problem with software collecting data that is aggregated and not kept in an individually identifiable format.
There should also be a way to opt-out with no negative repercussions (feature disabling).
Those two simple guarantees and I'm comfortable. The problem is I don't trust a corporation to be honest and forthright with the handling of customer data.
So if the email starts getting spam for Viagra, we'll know the plane landed in Florida. If the spam is always asking for help recovering money from some bank account, the plane landed in Nigeria. If the spam contains links to phishing sites, the plane landed in Russia. If the spam contains viruses and malware, the plane landed in Romania. If the spam contains a bunch of unreadable characters, the plane landed in Asia.
As a 43 year lifetime resident of Maryland, I've had it. I've loved living here and am damn proud to be a Marylander, but this is bullsquat. I had been thinking of moving and this seals it for me, I'm outta here as soon as I can.
We're also getting screwed with one-armed bandits too.
Until I have a reason to upgrade beyond Windows XP other than Microsoft telling me, or better yet, trying to force me, I'm sticking with Windows XP. I've yet to see one reason to upgrade Vista and no one I know personally has been happy they had upgraded. Windows 7.
Indeed!
Slashdot Mirror
Are you really sure those were females?
They are a monopoly that for decades has abused the artists they are supposed to protect and villainized their customers.
The RIAA does not represent or protect artists. They represent and protect the record companies profits by victimizing the artists fans.
What Turbine got right with AC1 was the flexibility in character development. Rather than have fixed specific character types, you basically had templates that you could either follow or not. This allowed people to create any character type they wanted. Unfortunately it also led to screwing the pooch if you made a mistake in choosing your upgrades. For me, I liked my characters flaws, it made you think a lot more about what you were doing and how to do it.
AC1's doom was Microsoft. I was there when they came in and destroyed the volunteer team of helpers. I watched as the MS people came in and walked over those that built that team and ruined it. Ken Karl and his team of MS employees ruled with an iron fist and eventually MS disbanded the Advocate team.
AC2 was a total and complete disaster from the beginning and the fault lies squarely at the feet of MS. Instead of letting the game designers to their job, MS tried to make AC2 into something it couldn't be. I was in the Alpha and Beta of AC2 and from the beginning, they only thing it had going for it was eye candy. At the time, the visuals were just stunning but the game play was clearly going to be lacking.
Fortunately after the fiasco that was AC2, Turbine was able to buy back control of AC1 and kept it going. To this day AC1 will always hold a special place in my heart because it was the first MMO I actually enjoyed playing.
I was also lucky enough to get my name in the game credits for AC:Dark Majesty as a member of the Vanguard Team. My experience with the employees of Turbine let me know they truly understand gamers.
They don't need to subversively change your vote, just create a UI for the voting machine that is designed to facilitate voter mistakes, say make the touch area for some candidates bigger than others with a bit of overlap.
This gives you the plausible deniability that it was the voters mistake. Fingers too fat (You know how fat Americans are), plain stupidity (Bubba's just too stupid to work an electronic device), too old (Gramps clearly couldn't see who he was voting for).
Remember, they don't have to deliberately change the votes, just make it so any mistakes made will favor your candidate. From a UI design standpoint, this is easily done.
Until there is a way to be sure the code running on a voting machine is properly vetted, it's insane to think they should be trusted.
If your willing to trust one of these machines, just give me your paper ballot. I promise it will get tallied correctly. ;)
Things like access to studio time, recording engineers, marketing, and most importantly, the up-front money to give the artists the time they need to create the tracks.
With today's technology it's not that hard to eliminate the need to pay large sums of money for studio time and the engineers to make it work. With a good PC, someone with a good ear, and an artist that actually has talent (Hell, who am I kidding, these days you don't even need that!) it's not hard to a produce quality product.
Most tripe put out these days that's done in a fancy, over-priced studio is usually so over processed it sounds nothing like the actual artist. This is how you end up with no talent "artists" putting out albums that end up having to lip-sync in concert because reality doesn't match the fantasy recording.
I get it.. Their security is like Ogres. It has layers. Like onions. Onions have layers, Ogres have layers.
Yes, our security has layers... like an Ogre. Nobody will ever get in!
People forget what "unlimited" Internet means when used in marketing access plans. Back in the "old" days, your connection to the Internet was metered by time since everyone pretty much got the maximum available and you didn't have bandwidth tiering you have with today's massive capacities. You usually had X hours of service per month in your plan. This is the "limited" part of the sales pitch. Eventually the ISPs were able to offer "Unlimited" access, meaning you could leave it on 24/7 all month and only pay the monthly fee.
Now some people are clamoring that they were sold "Unlimited" service and they are being cheated. Bullshit. Your still allowed to stay connected for an "unlimited" amount of time which is exactly what your paying for and my guess is that your service contract states this, you get X bandwidth available 24/7. Even then, that 24/7 isn't guaranteed but it's the exception not the rule when there's a problem with connectivity [Insert chosen ISP bashing here].
I'm not saying this is a Good Thing(TM), but it's not like anyone has been cheated. It's just been a case of very slimy marketing by the ISPs.
What's AdBlock? *zing!*
This was my line of thinking as well. At best it can tell who is the better liar but it won't quantify a damn thing. It doesn't surprise me that the better liar comes out with the "least" spin indication. He's the professional liar in the bunch and therefore won't have as many tells.
You better check your blinders there, they may be on too tight.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/22/taser.death/index.html
"A police officer shocked a handcuffed Baron "Scooter" Pikes nine times with a Taser after arresting him..."
This was my thought as well as soon as I saw the photo. This will only be good on really smooth floors like warehouses, airports and malls.
Try riding one of these on a street or sidewalk and the second you hit a small piece of debris that thing is going to reveal it's true name, "The Nutbuster"
In some cases, selectively "feeding" the troll once or twice is a good things, then let them proceed to show everyone else they are idiots.
This is how I like to handle Trolls. I like to give them just enough rope to hang themselves in front of the userbase. Once your userbase sees the Troll in the light of day, they get turned to stone and stopped dead in their tracks.
Of course there's always that occasional super-Troll that's resistant to light and breeds sockpuppets like roaches. These you need to bust out the +5 Holy Sword of Light and Troll Slaying to throw down some bans.
I have no problem with software collecting data that is aggregated and not kept in an individually identifiable format.
There should also be a way to opt-out with no negative repercussions (feature disabling).
Those two simple guarantees and I'm comfortable. The problem is I don't trust a corporation to be honest and forthright with the handling of customer data.
You forgot one possibility...
4. Your wife has big knockers, blonde hair, and wore a low cut shirt.
5. Or, all of the above.
Ask and ye shall receive..
http://www.skunkmonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/asshat_award.png
6 digits starting with a 1
.....Fnord!.....
So if the email starts getting spam for Viagra, we'll know the plane landed in Florida.
If the spam is always asking for help recovering money from some bank account, the plane landed in Nigeria.
If the spam contains links to phishing sites, the plane landed in Russia.
If the spam contains viruses and malware, the plane landed in Romania.
If the spam contains a bunch of unreadable characters, the plane landed in Asia.
Man, this joke could go on forever!
Who said that?
"Hearing voices in your head? Big Pharma has just the answer, Nonoidizan. See your Doctor today!"
That would be
Me
Bob
Dos
Windows
Bob is a window washer!
As a 43 year lifetime resident of Maryland, I've had it. I've loved living here and am damn proud to be a Marylander, but this is bullsquat. I had been thinking of moving and this seals it for me, I'm outta here as soon as I can.
We're also getting screwed with one-armed bandits too.
http://www.stupidprize.com/?name=Maryland
Until I have a reason to upgrade beyond Windows XP other than Microsoft telling me, or better yet, trying to force me, I'm sticking with Windows XP. I've yet to see one reason to upgrade Vista and no one I know personally has been happy they had upgraded.
Windows 7.
Indeed!
You must have missed the other guy slipping a $50 into the cops hands.
Err... wait..
Web 2008!
Nah... Wait, I got it!
Web 3000!
Yes, yes, that will do just fine.
SMILEY PIG
SMILEY PIG
Does whatever a SMILEY PIG does
Can he swing
From a web
No he cant
He's a pig
LOOK OOOUUUTTT!!!!
He is a SMILEY PIG!!